Chapter Nine: Mission

Finally, I found an abandoned room and rammed it open with a shove of my shoulder. I ignored the cobwebs and the dust that looked it hadn’t been cleaned in eons and began to strip. I had the pants with their toe-boots on when the door began to open. I heard nervous giggling and froze for a moment. I debated whether or not to see if they would just go away on their own, but as the door opened wider and shadows began to flicker across the floor, I decided to take action. Mustering up the memory of Captain Terry’s tone my first night in the Training ‘Scraper, I roared, “Out!”

They must’ve thought the room was abandoned, because I heard them shriek like frightened pigeons and the door slammed as they raced off down the hallway. Having sufficiently amused myself, I grinned as I pulled on the tight long sleeve shirt. I began to sweat as soon as it had conformed itself to my chest, sticking uncomfortably close to my body. I grimaced in distaste at its rather figure revealing form, but pushed the matter from my mind. I wasn’t ashamed of my body, it was just…different for me.

But that didn’t matter. I raced out the hallway, nearly barreling into a giggling trio before I managed to find my footing and sprint towards the stairs. “Sorry!” I shouted over my shoulder, and I got a nervous laugh in response.

I took the stairs two at a time, practically flying in my haste to meet Sean in the entrance. I saw him as soon as I left the stairwell, leaning against the wall as if he hadn’t a care in the world, and I felt my body react to his casual beauty. He idly spun his goggles in his hand, glancing around the bustling floor as if waiting for someone. Which he was, I reminded myself with an excited shudder. He was waiting for me.

That didn’t mean I should keep him waiting, however. With a last deep breath, I slowed my frantic run to a casual jog and offered him a cool nod. He nodded in return, and motioned for me to follow him out into the blazing sun of the afternoon. I winced for a moment before allowing my eyes to adjust to the sudden glare. He didn’t so much as flinch.

“Ready?” he asked me, and suddenly his eyes crinkled at the edges. Was he smiling?

“Yeah.” We walked around the corner of the building, dodging trailers and ‘bots. I glanced at him again; his eyes still hadn’t smoothed out. The suspense was killing me. “What is it?”

Sean shook his head. “Nothing.” But I heard laughter in his voice, and I stopped dead in my tracks and propped my hands on my hips.

“Tell me!”

Sean stopped, too, and turned to me, still amused. “Your goggles.”

Reflexively, my hand shot up to make sure they were still attached properly. “What’s wrong with them?”

Sean paused for a second before responding, as if weighing his answer. “You look like a bug with them on,” he finally said. He tilted his head to the side as if measuring me up. “A bug with a very big thorax and abdomen.”

I felt my face heat up, and was grateful for the black face mask that hid the blush. “Gee, thanks,” I answered scathingly. I wished I could disappear, to the library, maybe, where I could lose myself in the shelves. How could he say something like that! I began to fumble with the goggles, trying to remove them to avoid any more comments. A rational part of me tried to reason with my mind, reminding me that I had wanted to know what it was he wanted, but I refused to listen.

A pair of leather clad hands grabbed my grasping fingers, enclosing them in an iron grip. “Don’t take it off, you’ll need it in a minute.” Sean’s voice sounded as if it was inside my head, he was so close to my ear, and I would’ve jumped ten meters into the air in surprise if he hadn’t been holding me down.

“Sparks, Sean!” I swore, and I wheeled around to face him down. “Don’t do that?”

“Do what?” he asked, and at first I thought he was being facetious. A second look into his genuinely curious – and deep – eyes told me different. I looked down a second later, unable to hold his gaze for long without feeling… odd.

“Sneaking up on me like that,” I muttered, and I wretched my arms out of his grip. “It startles me.”

“I’ll try not to do that,” he said, but I couldn’t tell if he was being serious. I glanced up at his face and decided he wasn’t.

“You do that,” I retorted, and started walking again. He jogged to catch up, and soon we were walking side by side. “So where are you going?” I asked after a minute or two had passed.

“We,” he corrected, and he grabbed my arm to guide me into a shadowed nook in the alley. There, dully glistening like a deadly weapon, hovering a mere centimeter above the ground, was a ‘cycle.

I’m afraid I couldn’t contain my excitement once I’d laid eyes on the sleek and elegant machine. “Yes! We’re going on this?”

“Yes.” The amusement was back in his voice, but I didn’t care anymore.

A quick glance at the padded seat revealed that two helmets lying across the dark leather. “We’re riding together?” My heart rate started going haywire.

“Yes,” he said calmly, as if it were no big deal. He strode over to the ‘cycle and tossed a helmet to me. I caught it automatically. It was scratched and a bit dented, but at the speeds we would be traveling at, I was grateful to have it. “At least until you know how to drive one,” he added. I bristled at his doubtful tone.

“You think I can’t learn to drive one?”

“Well, I mean, come on.” He motioned at himself, then waved vaguely at me. “You’re a… And I’m a...”

“I’m a girl,” I said flatly. “And that matters… Why?”

He sounded uncomfortable. Good. “Well, I wouldn’t want you getting hurt or anything. I mean, females are-”

“Are what?” I interrupted. “Weak? Fragile?” I laughed. “What is this, the clunking Zeros? You’ve got to be kidding me.” He started to respond, but I cut him off. “Let’s go.” I swung one leg over the seat, nearly kicking him in the process. The ‘cycle dipped a bit before compensating for my weight. “You coming?” I tossed him my best cat smile, though he couldn’t see it. “I’m going, with or without you, but I can’t guarantee how well I’ll go. You see, I might hurt myself.” I could practically taste the sarcasm as I hurled his remarks back at him.

“Women” was all he said, but I felt the ‘cycle dip lower as he mounted the seat. He reached around me to grab the handle bars, but I was still too fired up to care. It was a very long, silent ride through the City.

We weren’t stopped by any of the guard ‘bots. They didn’t sense us, due to the stealth technology that had been built into both the machine and the suits. It refracted air and heat waves around us to make us invisible, both to optical and infrared sensors. I wondered how Tripwire had gotten the ‘cycles it had as we zoomed through the streets, dodging ‘bots and people alike (just because we were invisible didn’t mean we didn’t have mass). It made the very long trip a little less boring.

It was dark by the time we made it to our destination. I had no idea how Sean knew where we were. It looked like a ‘scraper like any other: dull metallic grey, lots of glass windows, a little dingy from weathering the decades since it had been built. But apparently, we were in the right place, as Sean swung off the hovercycle and turned it off. It and I struck the ground with a thump, and I scowled at him. He didn’t see; his back was to me, and he was scanning the façade.

“Goggles on,” he ordered absently, and with that, he shimmered out of existence.

“Clunker,” I muttered to the space where he had been before strapping on the goggles and taking a calming breath. You see, the stealth suit responds to thoughts instead of verbal commands – otherwise, it wouldn’t be much of a stealth suit, would it? It senses your brain’s electrical patterns, and once it “hears” a pattern that has been programmed into it, it will perform the function that is assigned with that particular pattern. For example, the thought ‘stealth mode’ has a particular electrical frequency and energy signature. When the suit’s sensors receive this pattern, it ‘understands’ the command and blends in with its surroundings, the ‘stealth mode’.

All this means that I couldn’t work with my raging thoughts. They were going so fast, and in so many different directions, that the sensor wouldn’t be able to distinguish a pattern it ‘understood’ among the junk heap. When I had made myself as calm as I could, I thought a command, and immediately I saw the shimmering rainbow of lights that marked an active suit. I thought another command, and the goggles screened out the aurora caused by the bending light waves and allowed me to see normally. A glowing green shape with a Tripwire id number floating in front of it told me Sean was still standing in front of me, waiting.

“Let’s go,” I heard him say through my headset, and I nodded assent. He slipped around the building with me close behind, crouching to keep low to the ground. Before long we came to a rusted grate. With quick, efficient hand motions, he signed for me to go first. Carefully, I removed the grate, stopping as soon as it would start screeching and waiting until I heard the metal relax enough to let me continue relatively soundlessly. Once it was off, I tossed it in the grass, but Sean shook his head and made sure I was watching while he hid it in a clump of weeds. I felt my face flush with shame as I realized I had forgotten one of the first rules we’d learned in class (“Leave things the way you found it!”). Before he could comment on my mistake, I darted into the narrow opening, working my way down the shaft with my elbows and shoulders.

It was a narrow squeeze, I’ll admit. I’m not the smallest girl in the district by any means, but I was used to these narrow pipes from long ago, another life time ago. It was a maze, a seemingly never-ending labyrinth of metal, that I would’ve had no hope of directing myself through, but Sean, again, seemed to know exactly where we were headed. He would tap on my foot in the direction we’d need to go, and we never got to a dead end following his guidance, so I did as I was directed.

It was hot. I felt almost dizzy from the lack of fresh air, and it was disgusting to feel the sweat run down my back and my legs. It stuck the suit to me even more tightly than it had in the abandoned room at the Training ‘Scraper, and it itched in places that I was definitely not going to scratch – not with Sean’s nose practically shoved up my, uh, spine. I didn’t complain, though, and I didn’t hear him complaining either.

I finally felt a sharp tug backward on my heel, and I looked down to realize that I had almost crawled over a cross grate. I glanced over my shoulder (as well as I could in the tight space) and he motioned for me to go down into the room below.

I didn’t want to screw up again, not after what had happened at the entrance. So, I made sure to scan the room once, twice, to make sure that I would not be dropping into the enemy’s hands – or blades. I oiled the edges of the grate with a grease that someone had thoughtfully packed into the tight belt that was secured around my waist, regretting that I hadn’t realized it had been there earlier with the first grate. I removed the metal circle belt buckle and attached it to the ceiling of the pipe, where it stuck itself to the metal via magnetism.

The moment of truth came and went without incident. I quickly lifted the grate out of its square hole and eased myself over the edge of the gap, lowering myself incrementally by supporting most of my weight on my fingertips. I then pressed a button on my belt with one hand, and felt my fingertips slip away from the pipe as I descended into the room, the electric winch at my waist humming quietly as it unrolled the hair fine but extremely strong cord from its hidden spool.

I didn’t land on the floor – there might’ve been pressure-sensitive sensors embedded in the tiles – but rather swung for a moment, getting my bearings. I was in an absolutely pitch-black room, though I could see perfectly with a quick command to switch to infrared in my goggles. A quick scan showed little of interest throughout the room, though I noted that all four corners of the ceiling showed a slight register in dark red in my goggles, characteristic of a basic visual security camera system. None of the floor tiles showed up red, which meant that there were no pressure sensors in the room.

A jagged flash of brilliant, blinding white fire shot across my eyes as I continued to look around the room, and I forced my head back in the object’s direction to identify what looked like a glowing ball of pure heat. It looked like a captive star, and I wondered wildly how the room could possibly be dark with something so bright in the center. I knew instinctively that that was what we had come for, and lowered myself to the floor like a cat: soundlessly, effortlessly, gracefully. I took one step, congratulating myself on a flawless landing. My second step, I began to think that there wasn’t a lot of security in this room –

When I took a third step, and heard a sharp “clink!” in the dead silence of the room. My foot sank a bit as the tile registered pressure where there should’ve been none and set off the alarm, a shrill, panicked alarm that sent my hair on end. The room lit up, blindingly bright, and I threw a hand across my eyes. I continued to see ghosts of light flit across my closed lids as I stumbled forward, all attempts at subtlety thrown to the wind, and grasped around blindly for the glowing object that had been my objective. A ferocious heat beneath my palm told me that I had found it, and I scooped it up and cradled it to my chest one handed as the smooth orb began to burn its way through the heat protection that the suit had been built with. A door somewhere burst open and I heard the rattling of dozens of guard ‘bot wheels. My eyes flew open to watch myself become surrounded by ‘bots and their shrieking wheel blades.

I screamed and struck out blindly at the closest one. It fell back for a second, astonished at this unprecedented behavior by its prey, and I used the distraction to frantically press the button on my belt to start the reeling of my line. The ‘bot recovered from its momentary stop and raised one blade to slice my cable in two, so I could fall down to its waiting, whirling arms. Without stopping to think, I grabbed the shock stick handle that I had had stashed in the back of my belt and turned it on. The cylindrical blade shot out of the worn handle, the edge roughly sharpened to a point. The electrical fires licked the blade, lighting my face and the alien, hauntingly unfeeling head of the guard ‘bot.

I let it drop, point down, and the point struck the top of the ‘bot and buried itself hilt deep into the frame. I had destroyed a ‘bot.

I had no time to think about what I had just done as I felt Sean haul me roughly over the edge of the gap and grab the orb that I had still been clutching to my chest. He fiddled with it a moment, and I saw its intense fires go out as if they had never existed. He turned to me then, orb in one arm, and yelled, “Let’s go!”

His order was punctuated by a grinding of metal, and the appearance of a rotating, spitting disk. It threw sparks everywhere as it tried to reach us, and then was withdrawn. But only for the moment, I was sure – it wouldn’t be long before this entire section of pipe was cut to scrap, with us along with it.

I scooted down the pipes with as much urgency as I could muster, not quite panicked, but close enough. The pipe echoed with the sound of squealing metal, and once I thought I heard a shriek of rage that sounded for a moment like Ashley, but when I paused to analyze the sound, Sean unceremoniously shoved me from behind to get me moving again.

It was not like our entrance had been – the farther we crawled, the more times we had to turn around and go back because the way was blocked by grinding machine blades. I made one left turn, and stopped because twenty meters away was a dead end. I turned to go right, but blades erupted in that direction and I nearly screamed in fright.

Sean was suddenly at my side, pushing past me on the right to get around and herd me towards the end of the tunnel. His suit was nearly shredded by the blades not a millimeter from his leg, but he ignored them. “Move!” he snapped, and I felt my body being propelled away from the tunnel and towards relative safety.

We huddled in the end for a moment, our panting breaths eventually evening out to a more sedate pattern. I looked at Sean, black eyes peering out from behind the fogged, bulky mask, and I felt an intense urge to tell him, just once, how I felt before we died. I opened my mouth –

And Sean’s head whipped around to glare intensely down the tunnel. “What –“ I started to ask, but was abruptly waved off.

“Shh! Do you hear that?”

I shut up and listened, and heard what he could hear: a faint roar, echoing down the pipeline and clearly coming closer. “Fireball,” he said in response to my unspoken question. “They’ve just release a fireball down the shafts, and it’ll follow the oxygen – which, I would hazard a guess, is now strictly locked into the air ducts.”

I glanced at the tears the ‘bots had made, gaping like wounds in the floor, spilling light into the dim passageway. “What about the slits? Shouldn’t those leak air?”

Sean chuckled darkly. “They just patched them up. See?” He pointed at the slits, and I suddenly saw that they had just been soldered shut, leaving us in utter darkness. He looked at me then before looking away. “Sorry.”

The sense of sorrow I heard in his voice ignited a fierce desire in my heart. I would not die. Not like this. I had sworn, hadn’t I? Not to die like some trapped rat in a junk-heap factory? Here I was, trapped in a pipe, probably in a factory, with the guy I lo-cared about, and I was just sitting here? Not happening.

Quickly, I shoved his body aside and started rifling through my belt pack. “What’re you –” he began, but I cut him off. “Do you have a knife?”

“Sure,” he said, confused. He produced a slim little blade, a burglar’s knife: good for picking locks, not so good for cutting.

“It’ll have to do,” I muttered, and I grabbed the offered weapon. I began to hack into the end of the pipe, peeling up metal.

“What’re you doing?!” Sean yelled above the squealing metal and ferociously loud roar coming down the pipes.

“I’m getting out of this clunking junk-heap!” I screamed, and dug the knife in hilt deep into the wall. It was stuck. I whirled around and saw the oncoming flickers of flame. Realizing we had only seconds to hack our way through the thing barrier between us and open air, I attached my belt loop to the tube again and drove the knife deeper into the wall, piercing the thin metal skin just as I could feel the flames lick across my back.

The hole I had punched through the metal skin provided an escape route for the compressed air in the air ducts, and I blindly grabbed for Sean and clung to him with all my might as the wall exploded around us and we were propelled over the edge of the building, eighty stories up, followed by a huge fireball of greasy, greedy flames.